Payback
by midnight-tessa
Summary: Based on the characters from Season Two of the Live Action Drama. An old foe wants payback from the leaders of 3D, and will go to any lengths to get it. Main characters: Take, Ryu, and Hayato. Rated M for violence. You've been warned.
1. Chapter 1

"Hey, any of you seen Take?" Tsuchiya questioned. "We were supposed to hit the arcade right around now, but he's still not here."

Tsuchiya looked to his watch for the 14th time in the past hour as he impatiently waited. Lunch had long been finished by this point, and the entire 3D class was waiting for the final bell to sound and school to be over.

In response, he received a couple of shaking heads, with an added, "Maybe he slept in."

"Until three o'clock?" Tsuchiya said, gripping his paper fan tightly. "You!" He continued, pointing said fan directly at Ryu. "Give him a call, my cell's got no battery."

Ryu said nothing, but silently flipped open his cell phone. He dialed, waited, and then hung up. "No answer."

A few worried looks shot across the room, but before another word was spoken, Ryu's phone started to ring. He flipped it back open, spotting the name Takeda Keita listed under the caller ID.

"Hey, Take," Ryu said without missing a beat. "What's going on? You didn't pick up."

"Shut up and listen!"

Ryu flinched at the stranger's voice. Right after, Hayato gasped and quickly realized what was going on. He rose to his feet in anger and gripped the edge of his desk so hard that his knuckles turned white as he strained to listen.

"Who is this?" Ryu nearly yelled into the phone.

"I said SHUT UP!"

Immediately, Ryu went silent, as did the rest of the class.

"I'm sure by now you've figured out that your little friend has gone missing. To tell you the truth, he's not looking all that good..."

Ryu cringed at the thought of Take being held by whoever the hell was on the other end of the line. Unable to slow his thoughts, all sorts of things came to the forefront of his mind. His reaction wasn't lost on his classmates either and they began to fear the worst, which brought their group anger to a whole new level.

Finally after a long pause, Ryu replied. "What do you want?"

"I want you and that other piece of Kurogin trash Hayato to come to the old warehouse ALONE! If I see anyone else – classmates, the police, or especially that whack job of a freak you call a teacher... well, I'll let you guess what will happen. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Good, now let me make this crystal clear for you... Because I know how few braincells you Kurogin morons actually have. You and Hayato... in the warehouse... alone. You have one hour to get here and I better not see anyone else!"

The line went dead and Ryu snapped his phone shut. He released a breath that he wasn't aware he'd been holding and turned toward the others. Their eyes demanded to know what was going on and it was up to him to tell them.

'^'^'^'^'^'^'

Sorry for the rather short 'teaser chapter', but the idea was in my head, so I thought there might be someone else out there interesting in reading about it. As the ideas flow, I'll work on updating. (The next chapter should arrive fairly soon however, as I've already jotted down some notes to get me started.)


	2. Chapter 2

"Where is he? Who's got him? Is he okay? What do they want?" It seemed that everyone had different questions and they asked them all at the same time.

Not sure of which question to answer first, Ryu looked to the others and said, "We'll get him back, but we can't just rush into it this time."

"Like hell we can't!" Tsuchiya declared, rising to his feet. "You tell us where he is and we'll smash through as many of them as we need to. We'll teach them not to mess with Kurogin High."

This got a rise out of the class and they threw their fists into the air and cheered at the plan.

"It's been made very clear that Hayato and I are to go in alone," Ryu said, keeping his voice calm. "If he sees any of you, who knows what'll happen to Take. We can't take that chance."

"But..."

Before he was able to object, Hyuuga was promptly cut off by Ryu who was now pointing towards the door.

"Go stand in the hall and tell us when you see Yamaguchi-sensei. The staff meeting can't last much longer and if she hears about our plans, we're finished. We won't be able to stop her from going and I was specifically told to keep her out of this."

Without a complaint, Hyuuga quickly bounced to the door. Hayato used the change in pace to take over the discussion.

"It's obviously a trap, but we need to make them think we are following their orders. Once we get in there and seem to be alone, that's when you guys'll need to bust in there and get us the hell back out. If we all run in together, there'll be no way to surprise them."

Since everyone seemed to be taking a moment to digest the basics of the plan, Hayato turned his focus to Ryu. "What's the point of all this, anyway?"

"I don't know," Ryu answered truthfully. "I don't even know who I was talking to. All I know is that he's got Take, and that if we want to see him again, we'll need to come to the warehouse, in an hour – alone. 'Alone' was mentioned several times, so I think that's the key."

Ryu paused to look at his watch. "Class is almost over, but we'll skip out early and take a look around. The rest of you should stay here until the bell, when we'll need someone to keep Yankumi busy with questions. It doesn't matter what you ask, but make sure she doesn't leave."

"Oh shit!" Hyuuga called, ducking into the classroom. "She's here!"

Hyuuga hadn't even made it three steps in before Yankumi was walking through the door. The others all stood around and watched as Hayato quickly sent a punch flying at Ryu's stomach. Ryu immediately charged back and they both went crashing to the ground. With a cold stare, Ryu looked down at his friend, before storming out of the classroom.

Hayato quickly followed suit, heading the opposite way down the hall. As he passed the classroom's other doorway, he peered in through the window and gave a quick thumbs up that was seen by everyone but the teacher. Now it was up to the rest of the class to do their part. He only hoped they were clear enough on what to do.

'^'^'^'^'^'^'

Eh, it's still kind of short, but an update's an update, right? Plus it's nearly three in the morning and if I continue, my writing will suffer and you'll be forced to read through more spelling mistakes. You wouldn't want that, now would you?


	3. Chapter 3

"We're not waiting for the others, are we?" Hayato asked, his intuition hinting that Ryu hadn't being completely honest during the earlier classroom planning session. He was certain Ryu knew more than he had let on to the others.

"There's no way they'd have agreed to us going alone," Ryu pointed out, matter-of-factly. "I figure we've bought us enough time for whatever they've got planned, so there's no need to involve the rest of the class."

Hayato nodded his agreement and the pair took off running. He knew Ryu was right – that the others wouldn't have let them take care of things on their own, but as the two strongest fighters in Kurogin, it was their duty to protect their classmates – especially the ones in their inner circle of friends.

After a short run, Ryu and Hayato had made it to the old warehouse where the mysterious caller had said they could find Take. Without even slowing down to formulate any semblance of a plan, the two of them ran straight through the open doors and into a large, badly lit, and nearly empty room.

Looking around, Ryu didn't see Take or any of the creeps that had taken him. Just some scraps of metal and wood lying on the dirty floor, and some pieces of broken glass that had fallen from the smashed windows scattered along the top of the cement walls that lined the edges of the building.

It wasn't long however before Hayato's gasp drew Ryu's attention. Unable to quite find the words, Hayato swallowed hard and weakly pointed in Take's direction. He wanted to run to him, but he found his feet were made of lead, too heavy to move even one step forward.

Slowly, Ryu turned his head to look in the direction that Hayato was still pointing. The same shock washed over Ryu that he had seen in his friend's face just moments before. "Take!" Ryu screamed, quickly running towards him.

He could see Take lying on the ground, his hands tied behind his back. Though his legs were also tied at the ankles, Ryu knew there was no need for his restraints. It was obvious from his condition that he wouldn't be moving anytime soon, for a mix of blood and dirt covered much of Take's body and the nearby floor surrounding him.

They'd all been in fights before, but not once had he seen someone so badly beaten – on either side of the fight. This was clearly overkill, especially against someone like Take, who was no more a threat physically than a grade-schooler. Someone was making this personal and had gone much too far in doing so.

_CRASH!_

Before Ryu could even make it over to Take, a baseball bat came crashing into his stomach. He doubled over and quickly hit the ground, wreathing around in pain. A second blow came down on his shoulder, followed by a hard kick to his already painful stomach.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Hayato screamed, quickly coming back to his senses. The sight of Take may have frozen him in place, but the new sight of Ryu had sprung him back to action. He charged at the offending stranger, but was quickly cut off at the pass by two other attackers.

'^'^'^'^'^'^'

Okay, I'm going to leave it there for a bit. I know, I feel mean leaving it there too, but if I want this story to be well written, then I really need to plan ahead.


End file.
